Managing Chronic Pain with Floatation Therapy
For many people, pain is a temporary and easily managed inconvenience – a stubbed toe, a headache, or a sore muscle after a workout. It’s something that disrupts life for a few hours or days, but rarely has any long term impact on our lives. These encounters with pain, however, are a far cry from the persistent, often debilitating reality faced by millions who live with chronic pain.
Chronic pain isn't just a prolonged version of more fleeting acute pain – it's a complex, often misunderstood condition that can persist for months or even years, profoundly affecting daily life, relationships, and overall well-being. Traditional treatments for chronic pain, such as medication and physical therapy, are essential, but complementary therapies like floatation therapy can also play a significant role in managing and alleviating pain.
Chronic pain can stem from a wide variety of conditions, including arthritis, fibromyalgia, and back problems. It often involves a complex interplay of physical and psychological factors, making it challenging to treat effectively. The constant feelings of pain and discomfort can lead to a vicious cycle of decreased activity, increased stress, and poor sleep, all of which can exacerbate the condition.
How Floatation Therapy Can Help…
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Floating for PTSD Relief: A Path to Healing
June is PTSD Awareness Month, dedicated to raising awareness about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and promoting effective treatment options for those affected. PTSD can impact anyone who has experienced or witnessed a traumatic event, and its effects can be deeply challenging. This month, we’d like to share an introduction to how floatation therapy can serve as a powerful tool in managing and alleviating PTSD symptoms, providing much-needed relief and support for those on their healing journey.
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70 Years of Floating
This year marks 70 years since the world's first float tank was invented in 1954. What began as fringe experiments and personal exploration has transformed into a mainstream wellness activity embraced around the globe.
As we reflect on the decades past, we wanted to share how far floating has come as both an industry and as a recognized tool for bolstering wellness and performance. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of history worth delving into (far more than we can cover in this short blog post), but we’ll be covering the high level eras and milestones over 7 decades of float tanks.
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Buoyant Benefits - Mental and Physical Recovery in Athletics
When we think of sports athletes, we often think of their success in terms of physical ability, performance under pressure, and in-game strategy. However, much of the brilliance and outstanding success we see from top athletes is built on the less flashy foundation of practice, conditioning, diet, and recovery. Based on our article from last month about Dr. Matt Driller’s work around floating and sports, we’d like to look at some other research being done by Dr. Lydia Caldwell out of Ohio State University (now at the University of North Texas).
Float tanks have become increasingly popular in recent years, with professional athletes and weekend warriors using them as a tool for mental and physical recovery. Dr. Caldwell has worked with float tanks for years and presented at the 2017 and 2021 Float conferences. She has worked with special forces military and top-performing athletes to increase their performance and has incorporated float tanks into her research and protocols for both.
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Sensory Deprivation or Sensory Enhancement? A History of Misleading Names
loating, despite its emphasis on stillness, has struggled in the past to settle on a name. For one reason or another, the attempt to aptly name and describe the experience of floating in the warmth of quiet darkness has led to monikers that fall short of reality. Of all the names associated with floating throughout the years, few have had the kind of staying power and winding history as its most misleading: sensory deprivation.
As a term, sensory deprivation was first coined by Canadian researchers in the 1950s. Ostensibly, they were studying phenomenal distortions in people working monotonous jobs, including truck drivers and radar observers. Beneath their sta
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Breathing Easy - A Look at Floating and Blood Oxygen Levels
mmediately after her first float, Jeanine was already at a new level of relaxation. She says it was an “oh my gosh” moment for her, and recounted how all of her muscles were, “just so relaxed,” even after that single session. Over the following weeks and months, she became aware of another benefit that was even more profound – a rise in her blood oxygen levels, something she had been tracking regularly using an O2 ring.
Normal blood oxygen levels are around 95%, and before finding floating, Jeanine was seeing huge dips in her overnight blood oxygen levels, reaching as low as 77%.
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The Science of Floating and Mystical Experiences
The ideas of altered states of consciousness, mystical experiences, and voluntary self-isolation often bring with them images of shamans, spaced-out hippies, geometric art, and vibrant colors, as exaggerated stories and tales of these experiences get passed around. These misconceptions are reinforced through movies and TV shows. As many who have emerged from the tank can attest, it is often a much more dreamy, ethereal, and calming environment than is typically conveyed on screen.
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50 Years of Commercial Floating
In 1954, a young medical doctor and neuroscientist, John C. Lilly, donned a breathing mask and took the first descending steps into a large, fresh-water tank designed to cut out as much light, noise, and general sensation as possible. From that first iteration, it would be 19 years before floatation therapy was offered generally to the public, thanks to the work of Dr. Lilly, along with Glenn and Lee Perry.
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